Design Sprint Process

Google Design Sprints

If you’re not ready to jump full force into your mobile application idea, we’ve been taught by specialists at Google certified in Design Sprints. We take your business problem, we refine the technical solution and coach you through a five-day sprint. At the end of the process, you receive a prototype of static screens to test your idea on the market.

Why do a Design Sprint?

A design sprint is the best way to to validate a product before investing time and money. Product market fit is crucial to a successful mobile application. The 5-day sprint process is designed to test just that.

In five days your team will move from an idea to a tested prototype and end with a decision that will save your organization countless hours and money. You walk away with a prototype and software specification that you can take to any development shop and execute on it. If you don’t have a trusted development shop, Pixio can build out your new mobile application from the results of the Design Sprint.

So what happens in those five days?

Here’s the Monday through Friday guide from Google Ventures (GV) that we’ve been trained on and perfected for our clients.

“Monday Monday’s structured discussions create a path for the sprint week. In the morning, you’ll start at the end and agree to a long-term goal. Next, you’ll make a map of the challenge. In the afternoon, you’ll ask the experts at your company to share what they know. Finally, you’ll pick a target: an ambitious but manageable piece of the problem that you can solve in one week.

Tuesday After a full day of understanding the problem and choosing a target for your sprint, on Tuesday, you get to focus on solutions. The day starts with inspiration: a review of existing ideas to remix and improve. Then, in the afternoon, each person will sketch, following a four-step process that emphasizes critical thinking over artistry. You’ll also begin planning Friday’s customer test by recruiting customers that fit your target profile.

Wednesday By Wednesday morning, you and your team will have a stack of solutions. That’s great, but it’s also a problem. You can’t prototype and test them all—you need one solid plan. In the morning, you’ll critique each solution, and decide which ones have the best chance of achieving your long-term goal. Then, in the afternoon, you’ll take the winning scenes from your sketches and weave them into a storyboard: a step-by-step plan for your prototype.

Thursday On Wednesday, you and your team created a storyboard. On Thursday, you’ll adopt a “fake it” philosophy to turn that storyboard into a prototype. A realistic façade is all you need to test with customers, and here’s the best part: by focusing on the customer-facing surface of your product or service, you can finish your prototype in just one day. On Thursday, you’ll also make sure everything is ready for Friday’s test by confirming the schedule, reviewing the prototype, and writing an interview script.

Friday Your sprint began with a big challenge, an excellent team—and not much else. By Friday, you’ve created promising solutions, chosen the best, and built a realistic prototype. That alone would make for an impressively productive week. But you’ll take it one step further as you interview customers and learn by watching them react to your prototype. This test makes the entire sprint worthwhile: At the end of the day, you’ll know how far you have to go, and you’ll know just what to do next.”